All things considered, I had a really good weekend. On Saturday morning, I woke up at zero-dark-30 to drive down to Annapolis and pick up Zachary for another snowboarding day. We were able to get to Pennsylvania, get our gear and be on the slopes by 8:30.
Years ago, when I was mountain biking regularly with Rob, he taught me everything about how to do it right. Being a full 6 inches shorter than me, and having spent a ton of time on the West Coast biking on original trails, he knew what he was doing and would launch himself down mountain sides with abandon—but the key was that he was always in control. He showed me how to lean all the way back in the saddle and control my balance on the bike itself, anticipate obstacles and the right way to get over them, and just to generally not be afraid. After riding with him for a couple of seasons, I could keep up with him and follow him down steep mountainsides without blinking—often we found ourselves laughing the harder things got.
With Zachary on Saturday, we started on the intermediate slope and I followed behind as he snowplowed back and forth to get his balance and technique sorted out. We ditched our heavy winter gear after the second run, opting to go in longsleeve shirts under the warm sun, and by the fifth run he started carving back and forth—and I had to work to keep up with him. I found that I had to push myself to stay behind him, and that old familiar feeling of unease and exhilaration put a smile on my face. We went nonstop from 8:30 until about 3PM, and I tapped out when my right leg (my steering leg) started getting wobbly. Zachary did one more run by himself (another excellent sign) and we packed it in at 3:30. He’s ready to level up to the advanced slopes, and I’m going to have to spend some serious time this summer working on my core and leg muscles to be ready to follow him down those trails next season, as well as screw up my courage to follow him, just like I did with his dad 30 years ago.
Sunday morning Finn and I woke early, got some breakfast, and took Hazel for a hike in Patapsco State Park near the house. It was a beautiful day to be outside, and we got to talk about a bunch of different things while waiting for Hazel to smell the smells. She was happy to be out on the trails, and even though she claimed she wanted to walk as far as possible, I could tell she was gassed when we got to the top of the steeper climbs. I’m resolving to make hiking a weekly activity, both to get her out of the house, but also to try and re-connect.
Back at home, I put the carb back on the Travelall, drained as much gas out of the tank as possible, and did a wet compression test on the Scout 800. After monkeying with the distributor for a bit, I finally got it running! Once I sorted that out I jumped in and got it in gear and moving forward and backwards. This is a HUGE relief, and I’m extremely pleased with myself for sticking with it and diagnosing all of the issues up until this point. Now I need to sort the front brakes out to get at least a little stopping power, and I should be able to pull it around to the garage and swap vehicles out.
Back inside after the sun went down, I sat on the couch and mindlessly surfed the web with the dog snoring next to me, feeling the soreness in my entire body—my legs, arms, hands, back, neck, and brain. It’s been a while since I’ve gone that hard and it left me righteously tired. Given how fucked up current events are right now, it was good to have a bunch of wins close to home.
I just spent an hour and a half shoveling both cars off, clearing the driveway and front walk, and running up the Scout. Apart from my fingertips being painfully cold, I was warm and comfortable (because I was moving around and also wearing Under Armour Cold Gear), the sun was shining, and I had a great podcast playing in my ears.
I’m now eating lunch in front of the Cincinnati/Baltimore game with a snoring dog at my feet. They’re showing clips of the stands in Ohio, where fans are layered in winter clothing, huddled together in snowy seats, and I can’t think of anyplace I’d rather not be.
Wow. 9000 days ago, I made the first entry in an online journal. 24 years later, I’m still here writing.
I wrote about the demise of Mint a couple of years ago, after Intuit killed it to force users to buy TurboTax or whatever bullshit system they want to charge for. We used it for several years off and on to get on top of our finances, with limited success, but that was mainly because we hadn’t set it up correctly. Recently we engaged the services of a financial planner to get on top of our retirement, and through the process of filling out his intake checklist and our initial meeting we realized we had several major blank spots in our spending. We left that meeting with some homework—mainly, figuring out what is going into those blank spots.
After doing some very basic searching, I was pointed at a service called Monarch through some glowing reviews. Basically, it’s a paid online version of Mint, and from all I’ve seen so far, I’d wager the key brains from Mint went out on their own and re-created that service. I signed up for a trial, started plugging my accounts in, and within about 20 mintes had a rough picture of my accounts and those I share with Jen; after she adds hers in we’ll have a much clearer picture of what’s going in and what’s coming out. I’m glad this exists—I was not looking forward to going through my statements line by line.
Renie gave us her old Apple Watch when I was up there a few weeks ago, as she upgraded to the newest and latest. She figured Finn might like one, but we decided (based on our daughter’s spotty record with expensive electronics) that we should hold off. So I decided I’d swap Renie’s Series 4 for my Series 3. What her watch adds are a bunch of biometric features the Series 3 didn’t have, like comprehensive sleep data and better heart and health monitoring. I’ve been wearing it pretty regularly since I came back, and it’s given me some insights into how much good sleep I’m getting (not as much as I need) and where my heart rate (still lower than a snake’s belly) and exercise numbers (definitely not as good as they should be) are. So I cut my nightly beer out this week to see if that helps with my sleep, and even though it’s getting colder in the mornings, I’m re-committing to walking Hazel as much as possible. Thanks Ren!
Once I got my own apartment in college, and was too poor to afford my own Mister Coffee drip-coffee machine, I resorted to a single cup pour-over jawn, which I filled by heating water in a pot on the stove. And here I need to take a minute. Because when I walk into a bougie café now and see “pour-over” as a special bullshit bespoke option I cannot help thinking that people are suckers. That’s how I made my coffee when I was too poor to make it any other way.
Mike Montiero, author of Design Is a Job and What Is a Designer? writes about coffee in his newsletter.
I’m currently using a pour-over setup after having cycled through my camping percolator (RIP) Jen’s one-cup coffee machine (RIP), several French presses, a brief attempt at an Aeropress (did not live up to the hype) and back to a French press. I like the pour-over but have been keeping an eye out for another cheap percolator at the thrift store—I did enjoy the coffee it brewed, and now that I have beans I like, I want to give it a try again. (He expresses a love for dark roast, which to me tastes like wet, burned paper towels).
Today I sat behind my desk for work for the first time in five weeks after taking my second sabbatical at WRI. Having time away to clear one’s head is a very rare and valuable perk that my organization offers, and while I haven’t been able to take advantage of it the same way some of my colleagues have (globe-trotting trips to exotic locales, for example) I’ve been able to take time away to focus on my family, my hobbies, my friends, and my life outside of work, which has been worth every minute—and a lot cheaper than plane tickets.
As mentioned here, I’ve spent time working on an EV swap project with my friend Brian, spent a week in New York State with my family, and I took care of several long-delayed tasks that required time and focus to complete. I also did a bunch of boring house maintenance, including a paint job on the back two sides of the garage.
It’s going to be very hard adjusting to rising early in the morning to get Finn off to school, getting myself cleaned up and presentable, and hopping on the train again, especially as the days are getting colder and the darkness is getting longer.
I spent the majority of last week at Brian’s house working with him on his Scout EV project, which was fantastic. We got a ton of work done and are at a stopping point until we have more information from the wiring harness manufacturer and another guy who machines adapter sleeves and plates for the EV motor -> manual transmission.
I’m coming up with a checklist of stuff I have to shoot while I’m working, because I continually forget to do stuff like stop and explain what I’m doing and why. Upon assembling the footage for Monday, I realized I never had Brian walk through the history of his truck and why he’s tackling this project. Luckily we’re gathering for a workday this coming weekend and I can film him while he’s here for the next installment.
I came back Thursday night and spent a quiet Friday with Jen, which we both needed, while Finn was at a badminton game. And yesterday, while it rained off and on outside, I sat next to Finn while she caught up on homework and edited the first full day of the EV project video, which timed out at ~40 minutes. I’ve got enough footage to space these out for the next four weeks plus any truck updates I can get to this week. And at lunchtime I ran out and got my fingerprints done again and my CCL application in to the State Police, so I can be legal on the way to the range.
Being an adult means you can make a command decision for the family and make dinner a medium shake at the Baskin Robbins down the street. It also means the vestigial amounts of caffeine in the Jamocha ice cream will keep you up until 3AM questioning your life choices.
As I get older I’m affected more and more by cold weather. The prospect of taking the dog out for a well-deserved walk fills me with dread. Our 100-year-old house is one large draft covered by a roof; there are few places it’s easy to remain toasty without sitting under a pile of blankets. I’ve spent twenty years attempting to fill cracks, upgrade windows, add insulation, improve heating, and plug holes, but it still has little effect. My hands become icicles in October and don’t thaw until April. I lose all contact with my toes sometime around Thanksgiving and pray it returns for my birthday. This is partially due to my age and partially to my body type; I lose heat quickly even on warm days, and it’s only gotten worse since my 40th birthday.
A couple of years ago I found a couple of long-sleeve shirts on the rack at our local thrift store and grabbed them up; among them was an Under Armour shirt I wound up wearing a lot because the sleeves didn’t shrink after the first wash. This has been one of my pet peeves for years: I buy a longsleeve shirt and after two runs through the wash the cuffs only come down to the middle of my forearms (Gilden, Champion, I’m looking at you). The Under Armour shirt held up well and didn’t shrink, so I started looking for them specifically on our visits. A year or so after that I found another, which said “ColdGear” on the tag. Intrigued, I tried it on, and found it was skin-tight, but felt warm, so I spent $6 on it.
What I found after wearing it on cold days was that it did keep me warm—far better than other shirts I’ve tried, and much more comfortable than multiple layers. It kept my upper core warm during snowboard trips, frigid junkyard runs, shoveling snow, and walking Hazel. So much so that I took my jacket off and stuffed it into my backpack the last time we went snowboarding. On subsequent thrifting visits, I found more of them, and stocked up for cold weather. They take some getting used to; I’m not normally a skin-tight kind of guy. After a day, they irritate my surgery scar—almost as much as wearing a fleece with a full zipper—but the warmth is worth it.
The next issue has been my feet. They only have two temperatures: sweating and freezing. They know no middle ground; they are as impossible to regulate as an overtired toddler on a candy binge. Any socks I have ever worn make my feet sweat, making the socks damp. In the winter, they will then freeze over into solid ice; in the summer they become a fetid swamp. This also limits the kind of shoes I can wear. Any shoe with lots of fabric padding inside will become intolerable within weeks. I’ve found that Nike running shoes made of thin webbing are the best summer shoes; meanwhile I have a pair of leather Keen shoes that are at least 15 years old I wear almost exclusively in the winter. The soles have been reglued twice; I will weep when they finally fall apart.
It comes down to the socks. I wore cotton socks for years, but they were no good. Even looking at polyester socks made my feet sweat. Some of the blends worked better than others; Timberland makes a sock I’ve been wearing for a couple of years that seems to work for fall and spring. A couple of Christmases ago, my sister got me a pair of SmartWool socks and these became the go-to for winter. I wore that pair so much, I bought a couple more on sale.
Over the Thanksgiving break, I used these as my base layers along with a pair of bike tights for the junkyard run I made. I also had the good fortune of borrowing a set of insulated Wellington boots from my brother in law, which made a huge difference. It got to the point where I had stripped down to my jeans and fleece. Bike tights are pretty good, but I think I’m going to buy a pair of ColdGear leggings for our next snowboard trip.
This week it’s Love Spreads by the Stone Roses. I actually bought their second album before I’d heard the first one; the sound of the band had changed dramatically between the two so I had no idea the same group had recorded Fool’s Gold or I Wanna Be Adored. John Squire’s guitar work is underrated, and the rhythm section is absolutely locked in. Breaking Into Heaven is the other standout track on this album. The band broke up after this album, reunited in 2011 for a tour, and quietly disbanded again in 2017.
I’m trying to find other things to occupy my mind instead of doomscrolling, and I’m not winning the battle just yet. Many of my projects are on hold waiting for parts or shipments, so I can’t do much right now. The key is to stay off the internet as much as I can and focus on things I have some control over.